by Talbot Mundy
There wasn’t a word spoken. Hardly a sound. Noropa’s weapon broke against the stone wall. Tom’s fist thudded on the point of Noropa’s chin — dropped him like a steer in a shambles. He lay still. It was a pippin of a punch on the jaw; he was likely to lie there for several minutes.
Tom examined the weapon — eighteen inches of bright tool steel as thin as a bodkin, set into a heavy brass-bound wooden hilt. Hilt and blade both hollow. A strong spring and about an ounce of poison in the hilt that would have gone squirting through the blade into any wound it made. No smell that Tom recognized. Probably a quite rare poison. It was oozing out through the broken blade — thick, sticky stuff like molasses. He stuck the blade into a crack in the wall to let it bleed, so to speak, without leaving a menace for some lamp-trimmer’s naked foot.
Noropa stirred, opened his eyes and blinked. Tom stooped over him, lifted him by the shoulders — the man was as heavy as lead — and set him sitting against the wall. The door opened suddenly. Sunlight fell full on Noropa’s death-mask face. The station-master — Anglo-Indian, natty, alert, helmeted, smartly uniformed in white — stood staring. All three men had presence of mind. The station-master took a step backward to glance left and right for the railway police. Noropa sat still, pretending to be much less conscious than he was. Tom spoke to the station-master:
“Could you get me some ice water? I think he was looking for the lavatory. I saw him go in here and fall down, so I followed to see what was the matter.”
“Why did you shut the door?” asked the station-master. He was suspicious, but Tom’s easy assurance impressed him, and there was no obvious sign of a struggle. Noropa’s chin on his chest concealed the mark of the blow.
“Was it shut? I didn’t notice. I guess I kicked it when I tried to lift him.”
“Who is he?”
“How should I know?”
“By his turban he’s a Lepcha,” said the station-master.
“Yes. He’s on his way to Darjeeling. He told me that on the train,” Tom answered.
“Well, he has missed the Mountain train. It’s pulling out now. Has he a ticket?”
“How should I know? I’ve no right to look in his pockets. Tell you what,” said Tom, “I’m going up by road, so I’ll give him a lift. If he isn’t better by the time we reach the hotel I’ll take him to a doctor. Will you help me get him out of here?”
“I’ll call a couple of porters. Have you engaged a car? I’ll see if I can get one for you.”
When the station-master turned his back Tom shook his fist under Noropa’s nose for silence. It was hardly necessary. Noropa had heard, understood. He even smiled assent to Tom’s lie about what had happened. Tom took the knife from the crack in the wall, wrapped it in a rag that he snatched from the lamp-shelf and thrust it into Noropa’s jacket-pocket, forcing it down between the jacket and the cheap Italian half-lining. He picked up the broken half of the blade and put that into Noropa’s side-pocket. Noropa understood that also: if the police should show up and become curious, they would find that deadly weapon on the person of its owner.
The station-master returned with two porters.
“There’s only one auto left,” he said. “It’s a ramshackle old thing, but you’ll have to take it if you don’t want to wait for a couple of hours. He looks better already, doesn’t he. Some of them, if they’re not used to it, get train-sick. But I’d take him to a hospital, if I were you, and let ’em find out what’s wrong. Come on, you, these porters will help you out o’here.”
CHAPTER 19. “You’re a mongrel. but I’ll give you a chance.”
IT was an ancient Sunbeam. Its spare tire was down to the canvas; the four tires in use were only slightly better. The springs of the worn cushions were concealed by a folded stable blanket. The Bengali Moslem driver knew no English.
The engine sounded like a machine-gun getting hot and about ready to jam; it was a question which would give out first, engine or tires. But Tom couldn’t afford to let it go at that. With a grin at the driver he raised the hood, pretending to give a half-turn to the screws on a couple of oil cups. What he actually did was to open the newly fitted brass water plug just enough to establish a steady drip, good for ten or twelve miles at a guess, supposing the radiator was full to start with. It probably was full; there was a water faucet near by and the water cost nothing.
Then away, on the rear seat beside Noropa, with a rattle like a tinker’s cart and the canvas top nodding like a processional canopy. Rubber tooter, blowing like the devil to make the Siliguri bullock-carts get out of the way. Dead slow, choking dusty, until they turned toward the mountain and began the long, comparatively easy, beautifully engineered ascent.
Tom recovered the weapon then. His left fist, knotted like a club, commanded the situation; his right hand searched Noropa’s pockets competently, considering that picking pockets wasn’t his normal occupation. All he found was the poisoned dagger in two parts, several hundred rupees in paper money, a few small coins and a white gold wrist-watch with a broken strap. It was all right, it wasn’t Elsa’s watch, though it did look like it for a moment. No return ticket. One Tibetan coin among the small change wasn’t anything to arouse comment. But the ten-rupee notes were brand new.
“All a traveler needs nowadays is money, isn’t it,” said Tom. “Here you are — take it. When a man like you goes to a bank with a cheque they give him all the dirty money in the till. Who gave you nice clean bank notes?”
No answer, but Noropa seemed surprised to get his money back. He stowed it away carefully, eyeing Tom sideways, Tom pretending to watch the road.
“Ah! Thought so! Drop it, or I’ll break your wrist!”
No punch necessary that time. A small knife hidden in a pocket in Noropa’s shirt had fallen crosswise and hadn’t come out handily. It fell to the floor of the car as his big-boned forearm creaked in Tom’s doubled grip. Tom put his foot on the knife.
“Any more weapons? Kick your shoes off.”
He felt Noropa all over, tapping lightly, because it is easy to overlook quite bulky objects if the searcher uses too much pressure. It was all right, the man was completely disarmed now. For at least an hour or two he wouldn’t feel exactly tempted to use that right forearm. He was rubbing it with the other hand. There was pain in his eyes. They weren’t pleasant eyes to look at. Framed in the blue-rimmed plain glass spectacles they looked like the eyes of a man on the rack, so full of hate that no pain could conquer him.
“I’ve conquered tougher guys than you,” Tom remarked in a matter-of-fact voice. “None of you terrorists can ever stomach your own stuff. Somewhere between here and Darjeeling you’re going to break. Do you know what that means?”
No answer.
“You can have it as rough as you choose. I’m not squeamish.”
No answer.
“Where is Miss Elsa Burbage?”
“Not knowing.”
“Where is Thö-pa-ga?”
“Not knowing.”
“Where is the Holy Lama Lobsang Pun?”
Silence.
“So you’re afraid of Lobsang Pun. What could he do to you?”
“You-who-know-what-shang-shang-is — you-bloody-fool- you-break-my-arm — you-get-a-shang-shang-sending.”
“Trot out your shang-shang. Who killed Eiji Sarao?”
Got him! The meaning of his sudden stare was unmistakable. Some one — very likely Abdul Mirza, but perhaps Dowlah, had told Noropa that Eiji Sarao was dead of that wound in the neck. Tom felt fairly confident that Eiji Sarao was really being secretly conveyed to Naini Kol. But Noropa believed him dead. That was clear. A lucky shot, that. Now for another, a thousand to one shot, that wouldn’t do any harm if it didn’t come off:
“Lobsang Pun was angry that you killed Eiji Sarao. You come after me, to kill me, to make Lobsang Pun forgive you for having killed Eiji.”
Silence. Had the shot missed? Then suddenly:
“You-bloody-fool-you — shang-shang-sending-killing-you-like-Ei
ji!”
That was a stumper.
“Are you so crazy that you kid yourself you’re a shang-shang?”
No answer. Tom, his imagination leaping from guess to guess, plugged home another disturbing question without a query mark:
“Rajah Dowlah told you Lobsang Pun demanded that you kill me, because the Japanese demanded it, because I’m bad for the plan to make use of Thö-pa-ga.”
Got him again! Noropa shook his head in dissent too vehemently. His eyes glazed with the smoky oriental sullenness that guards the truth that has been touched but still perhaps only guessed at, not discovered.
“You’re an awful boob,” said Tom, “if you believed that yarn. You haven’t a Chinaman’s chance to curry favor with Lobsang Pun. He’s through with you. If you had killed me, he’d have had you hanged by the British. Or, if they wouldn’t do it, he’d have had you fed to shang-shangs.”
Noropa shuddered. The mention of Lobsang Pun’s name seemed to make him as nervous as a chela who hears his guru being blasphemed.
“As for Dowlah,” said Tom, “if you trust him, you’re a worse fool even than I thought you. Dowlah believes in neither god nor devil. He’d betray any one, if he thought he couldn’t be found out, just for the sake of feeling clever. What did Dowlah tell you about me?”
No answer.
“Dowlah told you they’ve decided they don’t need me but they can use Miss Elsa Burbage.”
Noropa’s intelligence laired in a cavernous mystery of superstition. To him, every breath a man breathed — every word a man said, had a dark metaphysical cause; it served some devil’s purpose, or it could not be. Sulky, sullen, he was frightened by the accuracy of Tom’s guesswork. It seemed to him supernatural. It had far more effect on him than the punch on the jaw and the agonied arm. Tom continued:
“So Dowlah gave you a weapon and money, but he didn’t tell Abdul Mirza. You traveled with Abdul Mirza’s staff, but they can swear they knew nothing about it.”
No answer.
They had crossed the wandering narrow-gauge railway track a dozen times, when the rotten old rattletrap car at last did even better than Tom hoped. Half-way through a mile-wide belt of deodars, between two tea estates, the radiator boiled and a rear tire blew like a gun going off. The Bengali driver, in a rising off-key yell of misery, named three men, probably mechanics. He invited Allah (blessed be His Prophet) to impregnate them and all their progeny forever with deathless worms and inward-growing boils that should destroy their rest and make sleep a torment. Having attended to that, he got down to attend to the tire. Tom eyed Noropa:
“Put your shoes on and get out.”
The set-up was perfect. A dark wilderness of trees. A convenient hollow out of earshot from the road. Probably at least an hour’s work for the Bengali, patching that rotten tire and then finding out what was wrong with the engine. Even if he should think of tightening the water plug, he had nothing in which to fetch water; he would have to go in search of a vessel of some sort. There was plenty of time, and no risk whatever of interruption.
Noropa tried to escape. Tom’s toe hooked his instep as he ducked around a big tree. He fell headlong and got up be cause he was kicked up. There isn’t any fun in kicking even murderers who use poisoned daggers, but there was no sense in half-doing the job. Noropa walked backward after that. He didn’t dare to shout for help, nor did he dare take his eyes off Tom; a fellow whose team had depended on him, not so many years ago, for an occasional drop-goal from the seventy-five yard line, has a remarkably accurate aim and a toe that can hurt. Noropa fell, naturally, several times. He was kicked up again. He picked up a rock. It was kicked out of his hand before he could raise his hand to throw it. By the time they reached the bottom of the hollow he was possessed by an inferiority complex that even his malice hadn’t heat enough to burn off. Tom did nothing to reduce it:
“You miserable mongrel. Why d’you call yourself Tibetan? You couldn’t fool a Tibetan. You’re Chinese-Jap. Chinks and Japs are not allowed in Inner Tibet.”
Silence. It amounted to sulky assent. No Tibetan would have swallowed that insult without protest. Tom’s guesses were beginning to have the feel of accuracy. It was like working out a mathematical equation with a number of unknowns. Get one right and the others logically follow.
“I’d give a dollar to know your early history, you useless pye-dog.”
Not a word at random. The word “useless” specially chosen. “Pye-dog” was pretty scurrilous, but it was better than its American equivalent, at the moment.
“You’ve had an education of sorts. You’re a Christian convert. You were kicked out of your church.”
A hit! Mystery men hate to be stripped of their veils. They prefer physical torture; vanity helps them to endure that. Noropa stood still enough, but his mind almost visibly shrank. It found no shelter.
“You’re a killer. You probably murdered a Christian priest somewhere in China. Not for money. You’d be too superstitious. The first thing they teach you black magicians is you mustn’t kill for money. Did you want to take holy orders? Did a father-confessor say no? Told you you weren’t fit for the priesthood? That it?”
Silence.
“Tell me when I’m mistaken, won’t you! Turned down. Revenge. Was it you? — or wasn’t it? — who tipped off the Chinese to scough a mission? But a taste of religion had shown you a way to become important. Couldn’t get by as a Christian. Tried another line, eh? Fell in with a shaman? You’ve the symptoms. One of those wandering wizards who sell poisons and love-potions? Taught you that your ugly mug was fine for scaring women, kids, sick folk, and superstitious peasants. Hell, you even tried to scare me with it, in London.”
The eyes, now, of a cornered animal that daren’t fight and can’t run. The eyes of a gangster, not only cut off from, but deserted by his gang. Defiance dead. Nothing left but a lonely, self-pitying gloom that a man, however tough he may be, can’t keep out of his. eyes when he knows the gang has disowned him. There is the same look in the eyes of an animal that has been driven from the herd.
“Who taught you Tantric Buddhism?” Tom demanded. “Did you learn it in Peking, hanging around the legations, doing odds and ends of spy work, while you looked for a religion that you could get your teeth into? Lots of exiled Tibetans in Peking.”
He was taking long chances. You can’t expect a bull’s-eye every guess, not even when the guessing is comparatively easy. But he was watching Noropa’s eyes; there wasn’t a hint of a gleam of triumph to suggest that he was guessing badly. There wasn’t even a look of momentary relief.
“And then the Tashi Lama — Panchen Lama, you’d call him — fled from Shigatse in Tibet to escape from the political gang in Lhasa. Wanted to go to Urga in Mongolia. But the Chinese Government was afraid the Russians might get control of him, so they forced him to go to Peking, where they gave him an apartment in the imperial palace. The Jap legation had sense enough to see his value in a second. You haven’t brains enough to have thought of that. But by that time you’d made yourself pretty useful to the undercover agents of the Japanese legation. Hadn’t you? And of course, they threatened you. That’s routine. Obey, or be betrayed to the Chinese and repudiated — then left to your fate. The prospect of the tortures in a Chinese dungeon didn’t tempt you, but a chance to get your teeth into a good mysterious religion did. One way or another you wormed your way into the Tashi — that’s to say the Panchen Lama’s establishment in Peking, as a spy for the Japanese. Guard? Or were you posing as a humble supplicant for religious teaching? Or both? Answer: is that how you came to meet Lobsang Pun?”
No answer. A glare of sullen obstinacy, instantly met by a resounding crack on the jaw from Tom’s fist.
“You heard me. Answer.”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. Who told you about the Thunder Dragon Gate and Thö-pa-ga?”
Silence. Noropa was rubbing his jaw. His lips were trembling. His fingers twitched. Insolence had begun to yield to self-pity. To keep
him from rebuilding his mental resistance, Tom went at him swiftly from another angle:
“All sorts of undercover dirty work goes on, doesn’t it, that the Tashi — I mean Panchen Lama doesn’t know about. His Holiness is a gentle, benevolent man of peace. Some of his followers aren’t. They’re more ambitious for him than he is for himself. They don’t tell him all that goes on, do they?”
Noropa looked puzzled. Suddenly Tom shot a statement at him, and a question:
“The Most Reverend and Holy Lobsang Pun was with the Panchen Lama for a while in Peking. Was it he who told you about Thö-pa-ga. Did Lobsang Pun tell you about the Thunder Dragon Gate?”
Silence.
“Bound you to secrecy, did he? Shall I repeat the oath for you?”
“No!” It was almost a shout.
Tom laughed. He did repeat the oath, in Tibetan:
“This supplicant, in deep humility applying for a revelation from the earthly custodian of wisdom and continual blessings — standing in awe before the blessed sacraments and in the holy presence of innumerable saints, solemnly avowing secrecy, willingly accepts the penalty of being shang-shang-hunted through hell forever, without rest or other mercy, if violating this secret at any time for any reason.”
“May you die of it!” said Noropa.
Tom laughed again. He continued:
“Lobsang Pun was intriguing for Japanese help to enable the Panchen Lama to return to Tibet and kick out the political gang in Lhasa. He wasn’t expecting anything for nothing, either. Didn’t the Japanese recommend you to Lobsang Pun as a suitable man to be sent to England to make Thö-pa-ga return to Tibet? Answer!”
Noropa mumbled. The combination of being kicked and hit and stripped of mystery had left him almost without a will of his own.
“You you-knowing-so-well-all-that-why-you-asking-me?” he stuttered.
“Who sent you to the Thunder Dragon Gate for training before sending you to London? Lobsang Pun?”